DEBRIEF episode of Dr. Michael Alcee on Creativity, Empathy, and Emotional Mastery

Tune in for my DEBRIEF after listening to Dr. Michael Alcee's episode from Monday. Also - be sure to check out tomorrow's episode with the amazing Dr. Victoria Rodriguez!

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

All right, y'all Sorry about the delay. I am just getting around this first week of classes to be able to give you this debrief episode for Dr Michael Alcee's episode, and am I so grateful to be able to go back and listen to him share his expertise. It's just so beautiful to hear his approach and and I I realized today that the first time as I'm the interview going through this there were things that I was like, wow, that's really good. But now that I've gone back and listened again, I'm like, man, he is like a good movie where, like you have to watch it a time or two again to really capture everything he says, because everything he says is so good and so rich. So anyway, I'm grateful for him uh and coming back and and sharing the upside of OCD. And I bet some folks who uh tuned in thought, well, maybe this episode isn't for me I don't have OCD or I don't know anybody with OCD but there were so many things in that episode that, even if you aren't in sort of the very close connection or the personal experience of OCD, there were so many things to learn. And so I love that he talked about this idea of folks with OCD being creatively open and really generous hearts and imaginative minds. I just love how he's able to see it differently, right. I think so often we just see this diagnosis of OCD as just such a terrible, detrimental thing to a person's life. But I just love how he continues to draw us back to humanity and recognizing the humanness of all these things and how we can really try to highlight ways that we can help people understand what OCD really is. So I love that that's his mission and I love that he came on to share that. So I love when he's talking about ERP, which is sort of the main form of treatment that we have had for OCD for a long, long time, and how we should focus not just on fear but on so many other feelings and I find that to be true even in the clinical work that I do that gosh if I only focused on fear and not the many more complex emotions that people feel, what I'm missing out on, you know, I'm missing out on so much of their story. I love the conversation when we were talking about how people feel and think intensely and the most powerful statement. I mean there were so many powerful statements that he made, but I loved his take on empathy, where he said empathy in a really sophisticated way is one of the most difficult things to master as an art, and I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1: 2:52

I've recently had some conversations with some really smart people about empathy and how hard it is to really show it, and I was just a guest on another podcast recently where we were talking about ways to help teenagers show compassion, and I find it to be sort of this three-step process. Right, that I first have to notice something else in the world. If I'm not constantly distracted by so many other things, I can't notice the needs of other people, the hurt, the pain of other people, which is usually where we step in with empathy. Right, I can't do empathy if I don't first notice. So for me it's this three-step process I first have to notice, I second have to manage my own emotion, and that's what we talked about in the episode. Right, that we have to manage my own emotion, and that's what we talked about in the episode. Right, that we have to first manage how do I operate around people who feel and think intensely? You know, what biases do I have, what reactions do I have? And, yeah, I can't show empathy or compassion if I can't manage my own issues around how this person feels, and so then empathy is what I do after I have been able to do those first two steps, and then it's what do I do with my body, my words, my face? What do I do in this space right now to connect with this other human who might need me? So I just loved that Obviously I love anything about relationships, how he sort of pulled that in at the end. How OCD is so to tolerate nuance. How do we tolerate the ambiguity of different things within our world, within our life, and I just love that as a take-home message. So good, so many things, so upcoming.

Speaker 1: 5:02

We have Victoria Rodriguez, who is coming back and I mentioned this at the beginning of her episode that'll drop tomorrow that she came on the podcast a couple of years ago and it was one of the most life-changing things for me, where she talks about how we need to prioritize our physical comfort as a radical means of self-care, and it has crossed my mind so many times, and so I encourage you to check out episode tomorrow on chronic illness, and even if you're a person who's like, no, I'm pretty healthy, I don't. I don't think I have chronic illness. This episode is for you. It is exactly for you. It's also for folks who do already know.

Speaker 1: 5:45

Yeah, I have a chronic illness, but this episode is for folks who maybe don't even realize what chronic illness is and how it impacts other people. So I love the opportunity to talk about things like this, and Victoria is such a great advocate to be on the show. So hopefully you'll tune in to Victoria's episode tomorrow, and then next week we'll have Elisa Worland, who tune in to Victoria's episode tomorrow, and then next week we'll have Elisa Worland who comes on to talk about vaping. So I'll do a debrief episode after listening to Victoria again, and I look forward to hearing from anyone who has feedback or just you want to talk about the episodes. Also, I'd love to hear from you, take care.